News, Views and Analysis

Fraudcalls: the complicity of Elections Canada

My friend Alice of Pundit’s Guide is going to be all over me for this, but I think we’ve had sufficient revelations over the past few days to confirm our darkest suspicions about Elections Canada’s will and ability to investigate electoral fraud.

All this time we’ve been waiting, cynical as we might have been, for something to break. In spite of ourselves, we have hoped—because Elections Canada has been our last real hope—that properly-resourced investigations of complaints in 234 ridings were going on, and that someday, maybe years down the pike, but someday, we would be vindicated.

But the warning signs have been everywhere. Elections Canada’s heart—and, more importantly, its resources—have never been in it.

Bad enough that, besides some internal hand-wringing, nothing whatsoever was done about a blizzard of complaints received from electors across the country in the lead-up to the 2011 election. Bad enough that the Commissioner for Canada Elections washed his hands of the matter after the election, and his successor, a Harper-appointed rag-doll, won’t even investigate illegal foreign interference in our electoral process.